As others have said, \1, \2 etc are used inside the pattern, and $1, $2 outside it. But I'm pretty sure of two things: a) you're missing a closing paren in the examples and b) you've reproduced what I assume is a typo in the book (p111 in my copy), where it says 'flintsone' instead of 'flintstone' (no doubt merlyn will correct me if I'm wrong in my assumption ;-). So I presume it should really be:

/((fred|wilma) (flintstone)) \2/ # could be fred flintstone fred
/((fred|wilma) (flintstone)) \1/ # could be fred flintstone fred flint
+stone

[download]

HTH, mooseboy

In reply to Re: memory variables (chp. 9 & 10 Learning Perl 3) by mooseboy
in thread memory variables (chp. 9 & 10 Learning Perl 3) by sulfericacid

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.